Planting Crocosmia Carmine Brilliant Bulbs

Watch as a flower expert and professional gardener demonstrates how to plant and care for fall-blooming Crocosmia Carmine Brilliant bulbs in this free online video about home gardening. View Video Transcript

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Yolanda Vanveen

Video Transcript

YOLANDA VANVEEN: Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. In this series, we're learning all about fall-blooming flower bulbs. And in this segment, we're talking about Crocosmia Carmine Brilliant. And Crocosmia Carmine Brilliant is a beautiful Crocosmia. It is orange with a little bit of a yellow center and it's smaller than the Lucifer. It only gets about 2 feet tall; it multiplies really quickly. And again, it's a Hershey's Kiss type bulb, so you plant it with the tip up and the rooty side down, or, when in doubt, go sideways, and it likes to be in groups. So always start with three or five or six in one group as you--when you get your group started. They like full, hot sun and hummingbirds love all the colors of Crocosmia, so they are definitely a hummingbird-type plant that adds a lot to your garden. There's over 1500 varieties of Crocosmias. They've been hybridized throughout history. The original orange varieties came from South Africa, but they brought those to England, and lots of different people in England have hybridized into many different colors. So Carmine Brilliant is a hybridized Crocosmia so it's a little bit different than the native orange ones that come from South Africa because they have a little bit of an orange throat, and they're very hardy. They'll grow in England, even. The next Crocosmia that we'll talk about is Emily McKenzie.